Hospitalized Mandela Responding to Pneumonia Treatment,

April 3 (Bloomberg) -- Former South African President
Nelson Mandela’s condition is improving as he responds to
treatment for pneumonia, President Jacob Zuma’s office said.

“Mandela continues to make steady improvement in
hospital,” Zuma’s office said in an e-mailed statement today.
“His doctors say he continues to respond satisfactorily to
treatment and is much better now than he was when he was
admitted to hospital.”

South Africa’s first black president was admitted to a
Pretoria hospital before midnight on March 27 to treat
pneumonia, with doctors performing a procedure to drain liquid
from his lungs during the weekend. Mandela, 94, has been
hospitalized three times since December, including a scheduled
check-up last month.

Zuma said in a pre-recorded interview broadcast on CNBC
Africa yesterday that South Africans shouldn’t have a “lot of
anxiety” regarding Mandela’s health. The country must “take it
easy” and the former president will eventually return to his
home, he said.

Mandela served as president for five years after the
African National Congress in 1994 won the first elections since
the end of white minority rule. He spent 27 years in prison for
opposing apartheid, most of it spent on Robben Island off the
coast near Cape Town, where the apartheid government kept
political prisoners. He contracted tuberculosis while in prison.